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By Maura Zurick
Weekend Night Editor
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The Sports Illustrated Union (SI Union) said it's "horrified" by a report that the iconic magazine's website and parent company The Arena Group have been allegedly publishing articles created by artificial intelligence (AI)-generated writers, Futurism reported.
The article published Monday by Futurism, a science and technology news website, accuses Sports Illustrated and its publisher, The Arena Group, of using AI to generate content and attributing it to fake authors, including "Drew Ortiz," a product reviewer who has "spent much of his life outdoors," and "Sora Tanaka," who is "a fitness guru, and loves to try different foods and drinks."
Futurism found what appears to be Ortiz and Tanaka's author headshots for sale on an AI-generated image website, and said neither appears to exist outside of the Sports Illustrated website*.* Sources involved in the creation of the AI content told the outlet that there are "a lot" of fake writers.
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Newsweek reached out via email on Monday to representatives for The Arena Group and Sports Illustrated for comment.
In responding to the Futurism report, the union representing the Sports Illustrated newsroom blasted the alleged use of AI-created content as "disrespectful" to the publication's readers.
In a statement by the "Humans of the SI Union" posted on X, formerly Twitter, the union demands "answers and transparency" from The Arena Group, which it says operates more than 265 brands, including Sports Illustrated, TheStreet, Parade, Men's Journal and HubPages.
"We, the workers of the SI Union, are horrified by a story on the site Futurism, reporting that Sports Illustrated's parent company, The Arena Group, has published Al-generated content under SI's brand with fabricated bylines and writer profiles," SI Union said in the post. "If true, these practices violate everything we believe in about journalism. We deplore being associated with something so disrespectful to our readers. We demand answers and transparency from Arena Group management about what exactly has been published under the Sl name. We demand the company commit to adhering to basic journalistic standards, including not publishing computer-written stories by fake people."
The SI Union said what has been described in the Futurism report "does not represent the hardworking journalists who make up the Sl Union."
Since Futurism probed The Arena Group about the alleged use of AI, the author profiles in question vanished from the Sports Illustrated website without explanation. The tech outlet said it did not receive a response to its questions.
The Futurism article says that the articles targeted appear to be off-kilter. In a 2022 post attributed to Ortiz, it warns that volleyball "can be a little tricky to get into, especially without an actual ball to practice with."
While the writing is peculiar, The Arena Group denied the articles were AI-generated and said the Futurism report is false.
In an online statement posted to X, the Sports Illustrated publisher responded on Monday night to the AI allegations, saying that the content in question came from a third party that had provided assurances those articles were written and edited by humans.
"Today, an article was published alleging that Sports Illustrated published AI-generated articles," the statement reads. "According to our initial investigation, this is not accurate."
The Arena Group said it has since "ended the partnership" with the third-party company, AdVon Commerce, but not over alleged AI use.
"AdVon had writers use a pen or pseudo name in certain articles to protect author privacy—actions we strongly condemn—and we are removing the content while our internal investigation continues and have since ended the partnership," the statement reads.
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